Just 6 Munros left to do as we headed to Scotland for our annual week's trip. The plan was to finish them over the Bank Holiday the following weekend, when the club was staying at Glen Affric, as 5 of the 6 comprised the Cluanie Horseshoe, which is best done from the north. This needed good luck with the weather though, it would be thoroughly miserably doing a long hill day in the rain.
The 6th was Ben More on Mull, so we spent a few days there. What a great place! We had the benefit of a high pressure system just west of Scotland, so while England and Wales shivered in the rain, we had wall-to-wall sunshine. As well as walking up Ben More and its adjacent Graham Beinn Fhada, we had a trip to Staffa (Fingal's Cave) and the Treshnish Islands (puffins galore!), and also did a spot of cragging. Not world-class climbing, but the wonderful location automatically added a star to everything. And the campsite at Fidden is brilliant.
After watching some dolphins swim by in Tobermory harbour we took the ferry back to the mainland for a long drive out through Ardnamurchan (we really need a club trip there!) and Ardgour. We decided to spend the night at Invergarry so we could do a quick ascent of Carn Ghluasaid, the outlying Munro of the Cluanie group. This meant that the 4 remaining summits formed a more reasonable day's objective without a long there-and-back detour.
So all that remained was to drive to Glen Affric (about 10 miles as the crow flies, but 2 hours by road) to meet up with the club.
Low cloud greeted us on Saturday morning. But we remained optimistic that the weather would improve to give the forecast sunshine.
Charles set off first, intending to add a Corbett to the round. Carmen and I, along with Rob and Annie, followed 90 minutes later to do all 4 Munros. The others (Simon, Debra, Peter and Karl) planned to do the final two, meeting us at the summit of our 3rd.
And things mostly worked.
The cloud burnt off to give a sunny day. After a couple of diversions for some Munro Tops we somehow arrived at the top of A' Chraileag within minutes of the others. All that was missing was Charles, whose ambitions were stronger than his legs, and eventually descended after a Corbett, 2 Munros, and a few Tops.
Our final Munro was Mullach Fraoch-choire ("Hill of the heathery corrie"), and what a fine hill it was, shapely and with some fun scrambling up the south ridge. As we arrived at the summit, Simon and Karl produced a couple of bottle of fizz from their rucksacks and we all celebrated in style.
A brilliant end to a long campaign (27 years for me, a rather more sprightly 16 for Carmen), made extra special by the weather, the location, the company, and of course the bubbly!
So what's next? Well I've got 38 Tops left to do. There are lots of Munro-free islands we haven't been to, Rum being top of the list. We've started the Corbetts (probably about 50 or 60 done). And the next day we added another 3 Munros to our 2nd round…
Some more of Simon Fox's photos here
Ours will follow if and when there's time…
Someone on UKC posted about cleaning Highcliffe Nab which was all the motivation I needed to suggest this as a venue. Despite my last couple of suggests, who’ll forget Wainstones in the clag after getting most of the club to drive through sunny country side to get there, people joined me.
From a distance the crag look green (luminous), closer inspection was more promising. There are plenty of routes to go at across all grades, Paul G and myself did Highcliffe Crack (S4a — and a rock fax top 50), Flake Crack (VS4c — and a rock fax star), Heart Throb Crack (HS 4a — and a star also) and North West Route (VDiff — guest what, this also has a star), Simon and Carmen climbed, climbed similar routes plus Highcliffe Chimney (D — the only non stared route of the evening).
On the whole the rock is sound, the grades are reasonable and I would definitely have a return visit, there are already routes on my hit list, all that and 10 stars!! Awesome.
